Three (is a Magic Number): Literacy Fall 2012

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Ethnography

For my ethnography I am planning on doing mine on a group of online movie critics their forums, fans and how they all interact. I would ask what one needs to know in order to participate in these groups.

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Mini Ethnography

For my ethnography, I'm turning to Twitter. Initially, I thought I would study the greater than/less than phenomena. (> vs. < or even <<< and >>>). I'm not sure if that's too broad. My thought process after that is to study students from my high school on Twitter or Giants' players' wives. Genre - Microblog. Twitter is conversational, similar to texting but at times much shorter. 140 characters is the limit per tweet. It creates a space for focused thoughts. Hashtags are used to track trending topics, a fancy way of saying what people are tweeting about. For example, anything I tweet about my favorite baseball team, I hashtag with #SFGiants. Hashtags are neat because they open up a new world to Twitter users. One day, I tweeted with the hashtag #EnglishMajorProbs. Then it occurred to me, has anyone even used this hashtag? So I went to that hashtag, and there was plenty of tweets regarding that. So I followed some new people that looked cool and were English majors. Hashtags is a vehicle for community. Furthermore, it can track what's prevalent in people's lives at a point in time, as well as delivering breaking news. When Melky Cabrera was suspended for PEDs, I found out on Twitter before anyone even had time to write a blog about it. That is the value of microblogging. Role of literacy - you HAVE to tweet (i.e., I will unfollow you if you don't tweet). Contrary to what many who don't use Twitter think, the majority of Tweeters don't use it as a channel of constantly updating what he/she is doing. (e.g., I'm eating breakfast) Although Twitter may have started that way, it has evolved as a place to share constantly. It stands in contrast to Facebook, a platform that I see as used much less frequently. In essence, 20 tweets per day is perfectly acceptable, but 20 posts per day on Facebook would be considered annoying. Literacy on Twitter is diverse. I see everything from linguists who self promote their work to 14 year olds in the ghetto using AAVE. There is a whole world of fighting on Twitter (there is even a name for passive aggressive tweets about one's followers - subtweeting - in which the user is not named, but said tweet is clearly directed at him/her.) Leadership - Twitteracy played a huge role in the 2008 election. Hierarchy - Popularity on Twitter is measured by the amount of followers one has. Naturally, the more popular people on Twitter are those in the public eye: celebrities, musicians, athletes, etc. An interesting phenomena, though, is those who rise to prominence on Twitter (similar to YouTube vide going viral).

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Ethnography Plan

So, my ethnography idea requires some background knowledge of gaming. First, you have to know a few acronyms. "MMO" means "massively-multiplayer online", and it is a genre of game in itself. An MMO can be a shooting game or a fantasy game or other types of games. "PvP" means "player versus player", and in the context of my ethnography it is the type of activity/player I will be focusing on. The game I will be focusing on is called Guild Wars 2. It is a fantasy MMO that is very story driven, but also has a robust (one of the most robust, in fact) PvP system. Now, with that background information out of the way, this is what I want to do for my ethnography. I want to get into the head of a couple gamers that I play with (almost) daily. Me and my four teammates compete in PvP tournaments in the game. These PvP tournaments require high amounts of skill, knowledge of game mechanics, and team communication/cooperation. There are other types of PvP in Guild Wars 2, but I don't want to focus on those since I don't like the other types. However, this is one of the issues I may run into down the line. Focusing on only tournaments may be too restricting. But, if all goes according to plan, I will just keep track of all the literacy practices that go into my teammates' PvP play. I will keep track of the game chat, voice-over chat, websites, and videos they utilize to improve their skills in PvP. By doing so, hopefully I will be able to create a better picture of the type of person that does competitive PvP in Guild Wars 2 (and probably even other games).

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Ethnographyyyyyyyy

I am juggling a few different topics of what I might possibly research for my ethnography.  I might do Denny's, serving, Bidwell park, or bars. I think I might study waitress culture and literacy practices.  The language and literacy practices that goes into not only the process of writing down orders, but also entering them into computers, words and language used with the staff, and the specific training to become a server at Denny's.  There is immense amounts of literacy practices that go on at my work including words that are unknown to people outside our community.  I'm just not sure what questions I should refer to when studying these practices of literacy.

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Ethnography Introduction--by Shelby

I'm doing my ethnography on the students in the class that I'm interning in. I wanted to ask them what they were reading, but more importantly why they are reading what they're reading. I also asked them how often they read outside of class for pleasure. I told them they could include magazines and manga, comic books, etc.

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Week 6 - My Book Club Book

The book that I chose to read was the one about video games. I'm speaking of James Paul Gee's What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. The book made its message simple, as it was broken up into various different parts based around 36 principles that Gee has come up with. There is even a quick reference in the back for all 36 of them. The book's main purpose, as far as I could pull out, was to inform the reader that video games are just as useful for teaching literacy as any traditional means. He argues that video games are one of the best examples we have of how we should teach literacy in the classroom, although he makes it clear that he isn't suggesting we should play video games in class. No, he is actually suggesting that video games teach their players in a way that should be re-appropriated into the class setting. One example is how video games offer lessons without harsh punishments or stigmas. If you die in a video game (except a few that are note-worthily cruel) you will revive and be able to continue progressing. To take that idea and put it into a class setting, it would be like offering re-dos on assignments and chances to improve your scores. Everybody has a bad day once in awhile, but if we punish them severely it discourages them from continuing to give their full effort. In my group during last Monday's class, technically we didn't give our presentation. We ran out of time, along with one other group who didn't present as well. However, we did talk amongst ourselves and plan our presentation. In fact, I was slated to talk about a key part of the book. I was going to talk about one of the most key concepts in the book, critical learning. As it turns out, that was my key word for the key word assignment. I had some real-world examples ready and some pictures to accompany the examples. There is apple pie somewhere in there. But, of course, all that will be revealed in about half a day, I imagine. 

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Just Girls & the Shaping of Literacy Practices

The book I chose to read, “Just Girls,” by Margaret J. Finders reminded me of the harsh and unforgiving world young girls have to learn to grow up in.  At first I was almost in denial after reading the beginning chapters of this book.  I thought when I was young I never acted in such a way, no one was categorized, and there wasn’t this much negativity.  But after reminiscing I realized, it was this bad, I just had no idea how bad and wrong it was while I was actually going through it.  This book brought forth the idea of how these different categories set forth at a young age, like the tough cookies and the social queens, affected the social literacy and development of these young girls.

These categories not only shaped these young girl’s reputations it also opened my eyes to the idea that social implications immensely shape literacy and all its practices.  The social queens were seen as the popular girls, they were deeply involved in school but not because they were necessarily good students but instead because they enjoyed enhancing their reputations.  They saw themselves as above the other group of girls, the tough cookies.  The social queens had good relationships with their moms for the most part but their moms seemed to envy them and live through them instead of helping them advance.  The literacy practices of the social queens consisted of browsing through popular magazines such as Como and Teen Vogue because they felt they taught them valuable lessons on how to act and be a young woman. 

The tough cookies seemed to have stronger and more adult-like relationships with their moms.  They were expected to act maturely and be more responsible and most of the tough cookie families couldn’t afford to involve their daughters in sports teams or clubs.  The tough cookies read a lot because they didn’t hang out with friends outside of school and were unable to participate in clubs so reading was their outlet.  Most of the tough cookies read books around their houses that were their mothers, these books were higher level books that were beyond their maturity level.

I think the purpose of this book is to study and show the beginning steps of how literacy practices and literacy studies are formed and developed.  This book taught me how social groups are not only factors of social stance but they also have a huge impact on social literacy.  This book shocked me to learn of all the factors and negativity that goes on in middle school, junior high, and so on.  Literacy is not just a factor of skills, knowledge, and understanding its roots begin developing through social norms and social practices. 

In our group on Monday we discussed our relationships we had with our friends, parents, and school as young women.  We discussed what factors in our lives helped us to develop into the people we were today and how social norms definitely had a large impact on our literacy practices.  In a way I never thought of social rank as a big factor in literacy and how our literacy abilities develop but now I have a much stronger grasp and a better sense of why this is so.

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Video Games & Literacy- Shane

As opposed to my groupmate Shelby I am decently familiar with video games. That said, I still felt very interested in what James Gee was going to argue in consideration towards literacy learning. I had never thought of videogames in that context. Quickly though, this book is revealed to not be so much about videogames as it is about learning practices and how one is drawn to a videogame iteration and yet may be repulsed by more conventional academic experiences and why. Gee argues that 'good' video games have literacy learning principles that transcend the avenue or form in which they are delivered. Proposing therefore, that these principles could be applied to the learning of other fields with similar results. After reading and interpreting Gee's book I find the argument to be sound and appealing, providing "36 principles" for quality literacy learning. His concepts are a true step forward in literacy education but as Shelby mentioned, in this book he does not provide a plan to engage these into the current education system. (Although, he has apparently spoken on this particular topic through other sources). Not to reiterate too much of what has already been said, several principles, like the Psychosocial Moratorium and Identity Principle (important to think of the relationship between domain expertise and multiple real-life identities in understanding this), stand out as truly useful and powerful ideas. Our group discussed the importance of these in length weighing feasibility along the way. Another principle of note was the Metalevel Thinking about Semiotic Domains Principle. Which states, "Learning involves active and critical thinking about the relationships of the semiotic domain being learned to other semiotic domains." Essentially, this principle highlights the importance of relating semiotic domains (fields of knowledge) to one another. To name a few benefits, having precursory knowledge in a similar semiotic domain could rapidly ease the study of the current one or provide bonuses to existing or undiscovered domains. Gee himself claims that expertise in a game like Pikmin, for instance, could relate to the semiotic domain of science, through it's use of problem solving by experimentation. Overall, I enjoyed the book and feel it is an important and necessary text. James Gee seems to have stumbled on a goldmine of new literacy studies practices by viewing video game playing through the eyes of a student.

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Learning from Words at Work and Play

Shirley Brice Heath writes about her thirty year study on six families in Words at Work and Play. Her focus is not on literacy in school, but on literacy in the home. Heath’s research is primarily recordings of conversations in the home and the transcriptions of those conversations. A huge takeaway from this text is that literacy cannot be primarily the responsibility of the education system. I saw many themes in the case studies Heath writes about. First of all, the parents saw literacy and education as a way for their children to climb the social ladder out of poverty. Over three generations, there was a shift from country living to city living. In the earlier generation the families were working together and talking together all day long, doing chores, gardening, farming, etc. In the later generation, held jobs, spent more time in school, participated in many community organizations and therefore, less time together. They gained social capital and lost family connection. Essentially, the parents outsourced their children’s enrichment to community organizations like 4-H, Boys and Girls Club, and clubs that did theater. In my Book Club group, we talked about Heath’s case studies, and specifically Jerome. The consensus was that Jerome was our favorite. We were impressed with his perseverance and work ethic. When Jerome was left with no one, he found someone to take care of him (Tia Maria). A lot of kids in his situation end up turning to the streets and joining gangs. He took a totally different route. Later when Jerome was involved in theater, his motivations for literacy were so telling. He didn’t necessarily like the technical part of play-writing and editing, but he did it for his passion. Even more interesting was his interest in Heath’s work. I am so curious about Heath’s involvement in Jerome’s life. Obviously, he respected her immensely to want to become involved in her work and then persevere through the hard stuff (grammar, transcription, etc). There was something special about Jerome. He knew who to align himself with (Tia Maria, Eduardo & the theater club, and Heath) to advance himself and had the work ethic to achieve his goals. He transformed his way of thinking from in-the-moment to long term and goal oriented. Heath’s book was thoroughly enjoyable because of its narrative-like format with embedded analysis. Moreover, her case studies presented a theme in cultural and generational shifts which have affected literacy in ways that we (as educators) may not have realized started at home.

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What Video Games can Teach Us--by Shelby

As somebody who is relatively unfamiliar with video games, I was excited to read this book to gain some insight on exactly how video games are able to teach literacy and promote learning. It was interesting to read this book and see just how something like a video game can be so educational outside of a classroom setting. The one thing James Paul Gee didn't go into so much, and that my group noticed, was that he did not give a lot of insight on how to adopt these concepts into a classroom. We discussed that this was frustrating because the concepts and ideas that Gee presented in What Video Games have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy were really amazing and made a lot of sense. And while I was reading the book, I found that although I didn't know a lot about the games he wrote about, I could still relate his concepts to other types of media like movies and TV shows I like. One of the things we found most interesting was the concept of “psychosocial moratorium,” an idea where the players of video games are able to take risks without any real world consequences. We all felt that this was a very important concept. Gee writes that video games provide players with “a relatively low cost of failure and high reward for success” (59). This seems like something teachers would want to promote in a classroom and would be a good motivation tool to promote literacy. Another of Gee’s principles was the “identity principle,” where a learner will adopt different identities while playing video games or while in a classroom. Gee used the example with his character from the game Arcanum, “Bead Bead.” I think we were all a bit more skeptical of this concept in my group because we didn't see how this could feasibly apply in a classroom. Gee’s example was a student in a science class who “come[s] to feel what it is like to have the capacity to actually be the sort of scientist (and person) they have wanted and built their ‘character’ in the classroom to be” (63). We couldn't really imagine students doing this in an actual classroom, and although that doesn't mean that no one does that, it seemed to be a concept that wasn't as relatable as the psychosocial moratorium concept was. In general, though, I feel like I gained a lot of insight from reading this book. Gee made many convincing arguments as to how video games can be a useful learning tool. Gee was in no way promoting students (or anyone) playing video games in the classroom or in general. But he was promoting the ideas that video games are based on: trial and error, character building, and using characters as a bridge to relate to one’s real life. I've come away from this book learning a lot more about games and their value to anyone who plays them.

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Week 4 - Street Smart

Quickly before I get into the meat of this subject I have to say that this article was incredibly hard to read, and I can't tell whether that's because I can't read well or this author can't write well. I'm leaning toward the latter, and I don't think this article was edited. But anyway... What are my take away thoughts on the article? Well, I focused on the "Policy Issues" section, but I did take away the notion that literacy is social. Street pushed the same idea that previous articles we have read in class have told us. Although, that was an idea that I grasped from this article, it was one I already recognized. I was reminded of some material I had read by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. He wrote a book about language, and one part of his analysis/argument is that there is no such thing as a private language. This idea can be easily linked to literacy. He argued that you cannot have language (be literate) by yourself because there is nobody else that you can communicate with, and nobody else to correct you or help you remember your own language. In this way, it can be proven that literacy is a social practice. Now, looking at the "Policy Issues" portion of the Street article more closely, there was a reoccurring idea of scientifically measuring which teaching methods are most successful. My take away from this idea is that trying to quantify teaching is ludicrous. I came to this conclusion on my own, but it appears that Street shares this opinion because there are several persons that get plugged for their anti-NLS works. The scientific method can help us understand and improve the vast majority of situations, I believe, but it has no place in trying to understand the human condition. Humans don't operate on the basis of averages and statistics. If we were to apply what works best for the "average" person that would instantly ostracize those that don't learn well from that strategy. Not all students learn well from drill-and-kill, just like not all students learn well from visual stimuli. To best meet the demands of literacy learners the "sponsor" (there's that word again) should be prepared to use multiple tactics.  To quickly argue a point that (I think) Shane was making: the scientific approach to teaching, in specific, is not useful, at least in the way that Street described it. Street described it as researchers testing teaching approaches and seeing which was most successful and saying, "Nigh is the time for scientific schooling, for mine data hath shone down and illuminated a singular truth." You mention that the alternative method, the philosophical method, doesn't have the structure of the scientific method. I think you are right about that, however structural integrity is irrelevant when the subject (humans) are fickle. The scientific method can be useful in telling teachers what type of teaching is *most likely* to work, so that the teacher can focus their training on that and hopefully be better prepared, but the scientific method is measuring the temperature of a cube of ice on a counter-top. They measure the ice and note that it is just below freezing temperature, then walk away with their data. There data is absolutely accurate in that case, but if they were to go back later, they would find the ice (now water) is room temperature. Simply put, humans may learn best one way, then not respond well to that style of teaching later.

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Accumulation and some science. -Shane LaVigne

In response to Carrisa's and Shelby's posts, I feel the same way. As exciting the future becomes we always carry with us those old practices. The older ones are more comfortable and familiar to us so we are constantly drawn back to them despite how efficient or easy a new practice may be. I agree that there is a much more rewarding feeling in owning a physical copy of a book. One that you can crack open and not only see the text, but feel the binding and smell the ink and paper. In terms of senses it is a much more involving. That said I do a lot of reading online, whole books academic or otherwise are a common thing displayed on my pc. Slowly, it has became a comfortable practice for me. One that personally, because of it's speed and ease of use, rivals any physical experience. In reading the Street article I took away from it the idea of literacy education as a science vs literacy education as something like a philosophy. In thinking of literacy education as science your focus is going to be on understanding the process of educating for literacy and then creating repeatable results. Some would argue that due to cultural differences there are too many variables to create repeatable results across all of the population. I understand these concerns as they are important but just as psychology can apply to all humans, we can aim at education that applies to humans as a species. By this regard, I feel that a philosophical approach is one that not only does not account for cultural difference but lacks the structure of the scientific method, making critical review and repeatability nearly impossible. Instead philosophically charged literacy arguments attempt to persuade through anecdotes and moral appeals. Overall, I can say I agree with the movement of literacy education to more scientific fields.

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Where is literacy going?

by Karissa

Street’s article brings a couple connections for me. First of all, literacy is thoroughly social. It takes place in a social context. It is interacting socially. It cannot be separated from society. Street articulates, “It is not valid to suggest that "literacy" can be "given" neutrally and then its "social" effects only experienced afterwards.” This goes back to Brandt’s “Sponsors of Literacy” because whether or not sponsors intend it, they have a motive or an angle in literacy education. In relation to the video, the emergence of the social web makes literacy even more socially oriented. Not only is web literacy essential in the modern workforce and educational settings, it is a social avenue. To be web illiterate would also mean being part of a minority of people who aren’t connecting via social media. This is somewhat of a tangent, but that brings a whole other dynamic to the social constructs in K-12 of cliques, etc. Secondly, I like how Street distinguishes between literacy practices and literacy events. What I took from him is that a literacy event involves making meaning using all the things an individual brings to it. Literacy practices, on the other hand, are “reading and writing in cultural contexts.” To me these distinctions are absolutely intertwined, though. We cannot help but bring our cultural influences to our reading (but maybe I’m misunderstanding what Street means, though). Thirdly, I struggled with “Policy Issues” section (which our group took a close look at). It seemed to me Street was almost venting about the research in literacy. I wasn’t sure if he was in favor of the “regulation” of it, or if he wanted to take broader approaches that weren’t necessarily measuring empirical evidence. I’m not entirely sure what was going on there. In response to Shelby’s changing literacy practices, it is astounding to think how each of our literacy practices have changed in the recent years, whether we wanted them to or not. “We are the web” is so applicable here because we create and we consume online so much that we don’t even realize it. But when I was five, I didn’t even have a computer in my home. I read from those tiny little books my teacher gave me or some Disney picture books. Now a child can go online even at a very young age and have access to so much. The web has facilitated a monumental shift in literacy that is only just beginning. It will be fascinating to discover what emerges with it.

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"We are the Web" -- Carissa Kellogg

After reading Deborah Brandt’s “Accumulating Literacy: Writing and Learning to Write in the Twentieth Century,” and Brian Street’s “What's "new" in New Literacy Studies?  Critical approaches to literacy in theory and practice,” and than later watching the YouTube video on “The Machine is Us/ing Us,” I was completely mind blown.  I had a hard time crunching it all together and forming an overall analysis of what they all were trying to tell me.  Than it hit me, they all had an overall view of literacy as a changing art that is inevitable.  Our world is no longer simple, it’s not a pencil and paper type of world anymore.  Everything, and I mean everything, is digitally based.

            After reading Shelby’s post I was a bit saddened.  Because I too feel remorse when thinking of books, paper, and handwritten documents heading down a path of complete extinction.  I also enjoy the feeling of holding, feeling, and physically owning a book.  The wonderful smell of flipping the pages of a book is also very satisfying to me.  Than I began to realize physical books are awesome because they are a possession that you can own and keep forever, re-reading them or doing with them as you please because they are yours and only yours.  But digitally based documents are much more prominent when it comes to keeping up with modern necessities.  The simple reason that digital based documents are more necessary for our genre is because they are able to be changed, improved, and modernized.  Unlike physical books and documents they are said and done, someone already published them, they are solid and unchangeable.  This is almost a negative thing because being able to evolve work based on new facts, modernizations, and ideas, is a necessity in the digital world we dwell in.  Our world should be like one big Google document where anyone and everyone can post new facts and ideas and the readers as a whole can re-shape and further investigate and evolve the work.

            As the YouTube video said “We are the web,” it also briefly followed this statement with “we teach the machine” and the “machine is us.”  This makes complete sense, because we have formed this vast growing digital society with tons of information, data, and documents that are easily evolved, revoked, and tweaked to fit our modern advances.

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Whoops. I have been posting on my blog and not here.

Week 2: Brandt and Sponsors.

I truly find that the ‘Sponsors’ concept highlighted in the Brandt article to be a useful tool in understanding literacy education practices. It also easily allows for literacy to be more easily measured in economic terms. In particular, she makes many comments on literacy in terms of an economic commodity. I found this to be an especially interesting perspective when considering that a literacy ‘Sponsor’ may also be withholding literacy education as a means to increase the value of the literacy they control, (A classic Supply/Demand phenomenon). Touching on barriers and incentives, she furthermore translates differences in literacy education as difference in the classes causing changes in the barrier to enter into literacy. In my personal experience as the youngest son I was passed down many books to read from my brothers. This meant I read things ranging from Shel Silverstein and Goosebumps to The Hitchhikers Guide, The Black Company and Animal Farm. Constantly my brothers served as sponsors in my literacy by giving me interest in reading these titles from a young age. Today I read a lot of literature and plays for school as well as Sci Fi, Japanese manga and detective novels. I can’t remember my parents reading at all as a child, besides reading to me or my brothers some Giving Tree or Green Eggs and Ham. They read often now, (that all the birds have flown the coop) but mostly books on their hobbies. Week 3: Literacy as a Cipher

As Karissa and several other peers pointed out, literacy is this nearly ephemeral thing to define and while Brandt uses her three metaphors to pin down it’s behaviors she admits it cannot be defined. Culture, age, social class, education and so on, all craft your personal literacy practices and something so malleable is difficult, perhaps truly impossible to universally define. Brandt’s metaphors instead focus the tools that come with ‘literacy,’ and how the social environment urges one to pursue literacy as a goal. While reading about these metaphors certain ideas, the frame-pieces of a definition for literacy emerge. Upon finishing the article, one is left with the idea that literacy is tied to obtaining knowledge. In regard to the metaphors, knowledge gives you the power to change your socio-economical, physical or spiritual situation, knowledge reveals the pathways to your goals. After it is obtained it must evolve and adapt to stay useful, if you have knowledge of English but are suddenly in a country with a new language and people, you would have to adapt to communicate. All the knowledge that you gained can be view outwardly as appealing. However, these views are only cultural trends and change with time. For example, in the Victorian age an English woman was seen as ‘cultured’ if she could play an instrument, recite royal lineages, and speak multiple languages. Today, someone can be seen as cultured for visiting a museum, listening to classical music or even painting. The outward appeal of knowledge is not necessarily immortal but that argument could instead be made for the more personal pursuit of spiritual or philosophical knowledge. The fact we still study Aristotelian philosophy today, is testament to this. So, working with the idea that literacy is tied to the ability to obtain knowledge, I took a pretentious stab at a definition myself. Purely based on it’s behavior I found it to be very similar to a cipher. As you probably know, a ‘cipher’ is a method with step-by-step calculations to encode or decode information. (In other words it is an algorithm for encode-decode). All languages are code systems, stand-ins for thoughts and feelings. Codes must be decoded to be understood and a cipher provides you with the ability to decode and obtain that knowledge. To send a message that can be decoded in the same way, it must be in turn encoded using the same cipher. This behavior of encoding and decoding messages is very similar to literacy behaviors. An easy example is our writing system itself, to communicate via text in English you must encode your thoughts into these little squiggles, (letters), if you started using your own, no one would understand how to decode them. Grammar is another example. For instance, a ‘simple sentence’ in English must contain a subject and a predicate to be understood, saying “I.” or simply “Went.” makes no sense but together they conform to the grammatical caveat of the ‘cipher’. Forming simple sentences like “I went.” are most likely instinctive for a native speaker but even if we don’t consciously consider communication rules we conform to the encode-decode of information in order to communicate knowledge with another. This fact is the same for all forms of communication because they are nevertheless code systems, even hand-sign or verbal communication have their own ciphers.

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Changing the World of Literacy--by Shelby

Last class really got me thinking about how my literacy practices have changed and what I have inherited, and also what practices I've held onto. I think, for me, the moment that my literacy practices changed was a couple of years ago when both Barnes & Noble's Nook, and Amazon's Kindle were released. I had never had such an internal debate with myself on whether or not I really wanted something. I think, as an English major, I was a bit of a bibliophile, things I took for granted like the smell of the paper and being able to physically turn a page were things I never thought would go away and never did I think the absence of them would also intrigue me. I went back and forth on it; getting an e-reader would be so cool. I could have all my books together and it would only be like carrying one book, if I got bored with a book, I could just easily switch to another one, when I'm sitting in a waiting room or waiting for the bus I can read and not have to worry about losing my page when I'm rushing around because, guess what--the e-reader does that for you! That was it, the decision was made, I had to have one. But then the decision became Nook vs. Kindle. I didn't have to think too hard on that, because a few months later, my boyfriend very thoughtfully bought me a Nook for Christmas. And it was just as wonderful as I had imagined it would be because I absolutely loved my e-reader. At first I read everything on it. Many books were free, and with Christmas came the stack of Barnes & Noble gift cards I always seem to receive, so I was able to buy many books. But after having my Nook for around 6 months, I began to revert back to buying printed books. It was only sparingly at first, like if a book I wanted wasn't available in e-book format or something. But then I started to miss the feeling of going to the bookstore and buying a book. It seems mundane, but it is surprisingly fulfilling to drive to the bookstore and buy your book--having it instantly just wasn't as satisfying. I had gotten used to buying phsical books again. And after class on Monday, I realized that through getting an e-reader, I had adopted a practice and then abandoned it--going back to my old inherited practice. Although there are all these new technologies popping up, like e-readers and iPads, I think old or inherited literacy practices will still in some way stay relevant. But at the same time, these new practices that are becoming more widely available and more easily accessable will also help with literacy. Reading the Street article, especially the section on policy got me thinking about how schools are still stuck in the dark ages, so to speak, compared to universities. In high school, the only computers were in the library and there was a block on just about every website, and emailing wasn't allowed unless you were emailing a paper to yourself. When I think back on my high school education, I think that doing something like blogging through Tumblr would not be encouraged. This semester in college I am blogging in two of my classes and creating a website for another one. I know that many high schools are still stuck in this train of thought--that computers and social media are bad for eduation. But that's just not true. I am using way more technologies and social media platforms than I have in my life, and I'm loving it! I find that when I am reading things, especially things for this class, since the material can be challenging, its nice to have some motivation to take notes and pay attention to what I'm reading. And blogging about it makes it fun. I can write informally, tell personal stories, which makes the reading and writing for this class much more enjoyable. I find that I'm remembering things better, that concepts are sticking in my mind and I'm able to reference them easily. It's a lot better than being asked to write a traditional essay every week. But I also find that although blogging and social media may be the way learning and literacy are headed, it also comes with some downsides. I watched the video "The Machine is Us/ing Us." This may not relate totally with the point of the video, but I find that blogging for classes also takes incredible discipline because you can very easily get lost in the black hole that is the internet. When I'm stuck on what to say next I think 'Oh I'll just go check Facebook or Pinterest for a minute, that'll clear my head'. Or 'I wonder what's going on on Reddit right now, surely there must be a new meme that I need to see.' Then I'll discover a new place or word and I'll have to research it on Wikipedia. Yeah, it can be a problem. I think my point is that for literacy to move forward, we must not let the "machine" use us. We have to take comtrol of our literacy and not let Facebook and other social mediaoutlets that are a bit more inane distract us from doing productive things like letting our voice be heard through a blogging platform like Tumblr about literacy or non-scholarly topics, too. The mix of different blogs that are available right at your fingertips means that literacy and learning can be combined with things like photography or fashion or gaming. It's a wonderful transition that we're seeing where we could really motivate children and high school age kids to learn by combining education with the things that they're interested in, their hobbies, but from reading Street, and my own personal experience it is clear that schools aren't particularly interested in making that a norm.

[literacythree]

Week 3 - Synthesizing

So far in class we have been discussing literacy as a social concept. But of course, literacy has to be a social concept. Quite simply, there is no such thing as literacy without a society to come up with that idea. “Literacy”, as it’s used today, is a means to stratify people. It is used to say that someone is more or less intelligent than someone else. We have discovered, through out readings, that literacy is a sponsored skill, and we are indebted for life to those that teach us literacy. However, we also learned (or were perhaps reminded) that certain types of literacy are ignored and looked down upon as being inferior to others. Being literate to Shakespeare would appear more impressive to many than being literate to car manuals. More than anything, I saw the common, reoccurring theme of literacy being poorly defined. Every individual has a different meaning in their head for what being literate means. The dictionary is different from regular peoples’ definitions, and the bureaucratic notion of literacy is skewed as well. Schools want to educate students to a certain degree, but that degree isn’t good enough for some individuals and some schools (like vocational ones) teach literacy that wouldn’t apply in almost all of life’s facets. The same can be said for literacy of Shakespearean English. When, besides in class, do you ever need to use your Shakespeare reading skills to function in society? Yet, we treat a college student as lesser if they aren’t able to comprehend it. If you don’t want to read a rant, stop reading now and have a nice day. Before I sign off, I want to add that I tried to read the Keri Franklin blog, but I had to stop. I really despise this portion of current culture, where everybody feels compelled to write on every single social media site ever created. Keri may have only used Twitter, and didn’t branch out to 4chan, or reddit, or Facebook, or Myspace or any other of the 15,608 social media outlets, but it reminded me about them and that was enough. Twitter is especially stupid though. Who would *honestly* want to be limited to 140 characters? That’s asinine. You would never be able to post anything of substance. You could drop a link to a longer-form blog, but then why even be on Twitter? With 140 characters your relegated to typing about nonsense like what you are eating for breakfast or how much fun you had doing such-and-such. Do people actually care about trivial stuff like that? #140charactersLimitsMyIntellegence